Raion
The Raion is an unreleased super-mercenary to be launched exclusively in BOUT Evolution, intended to fulfill the role of an intimidating walking fortress. Its primary purpose is mainly defensive, but its aggressive and wide-reaching attack patterns ensure that it is also an excellent offensive unit. It will be only available in the Shop and will require coins. Appearance Raion is based on Chernobyl (also known as ED-902) and as such inherits its physical appearance resembling a hunched-over bulky, heavy bipedal canine/raptor or lycanthrope. It stands on two legs with fork-shaped feet, with a large main body and two arms that house tri-barrelled gatling-style proton blasters, with visible reactors. Twin fuel tanks are integrated into its shoulders, for use with its flamethrowers. Gunmetal plating covers the sensor array on the top of its main body, flanked by two stabilizer fins that protrude from the rear of the body. On the rear of the main body is a cooling vent array. The canine like head houses a energy-tipped 'tongue'; which it uses to strike targets, and it has a pair of glowing eyes that noticeably produce a menacing leer. The majority of the body is covered in a black rough-powder finish, while thicker dark-gray plates provide accents. A combination of striking red and dark maroon color accents complete its intimidating appearance. In base modes, it has a more distinct overall monochrome color tint and its slightly lighter in color, overall. Behaviour Raion is based on the MiniTank A.I. for its scripting, but has been modified and so has a few unique behavioral characteristics. It will attempt to strike with a combo with its tongue, then finishing with a heavy sweep with its arm. Notably, each jab from the combo deals a double-hit and is unblockable. The hit boxes of these combo strikes are quite wide, allowing the Raion to reasonably engage multiple targets at once. The most definitive aspect of Raion however is that it frequently uses its firearms; the gattling cannons and flamethrowers, both of which can deal a significant amount of damage over an area, suppressing targets or chaining stationary enemies. The gattling cannons, which it uses more frequently, will sweep an area within a fairly large quadrant directly in front of it. The flamethrowers will sweep a much smaller quadrant in front of it, but will end off with a longer-ranged straight hitbox. Both attacks last several seconds and can suppress enemies caught within them, while chaining any fixed position targets such as bases or turrets (enough to destroy them in one go) and also temporarilly render the Raion invincible. Raion can also guard against hostilities and will actively attempt to block against attacks on occasion and has the ability to counterattack if continously struck by enemies. Given the advantages outlined above, Raion does however have a number of severe faults to balance it out; it cannot run (its running speed and animation is identical to its walking), cannot jump (it has no animation) and thus has overall poor mobility which requires more careful guidance compared to other mercenaries. Due to the large collision box of its model, it also on occasion will fail to register that a target is within its striking range and thus usually does not land first-hits. Competitive Play Raion is presently unreleased and has not seen wide practical testing or combat, so only speculative theories as to its effectiveness in competitive play are available. Trivia *Raion's name is derived from the Chernobyl Raion. A 'raion' is a term used in Russia to refer to an administrative department of a certain district. (See: Wikipedia:Raion) *Initial tests of Raion caused the client to crash, as the A.I. used would attempt to access an invalid animation that the Chernobyl model did not have; a jumping attack. *Raion originally showed up as a transformation, but this was merely for visual preview purposes as it was never intended to be a transformation. *When using its flamethrowers, its shoulders detach from their original location and move to the front of the cannons. Its cannon arms also open halfway. *A large hole in the model can be seen from certain angles, as in the screenshot to the right. *Raion is internally nicknamed as the 'red dog', just as Chernobyl is the 'guard dog' due to their canine like growls and vocalizations. *The red color could be interpreted as a reference to the Communist (and Soviet) color theme, but this was a coincidence. *The only special attack of Chernobyl that Raion does not use is the arm-launcher move. *The sole reason behind Raion's conception was that "Having a monstrous guard dog following you would be awesome". Category:Mercenary Category:Coin Mercenary Category:Super Mercenary Category:Unreleased